AER Breakfast Briefings aim at providing regional stakeholders with a quick overview of a current topic.

EU financial engineering tools: what lies ahead and are EU regions ready?

Background:

2011 is a crucial year in defining the EU budget and financing instruments for regions after 2013.

In the current period, new tools, mainly JEREMIE, JESSICA and JASMINE, have been developed to maximise the use of Structural Funds, while the Risk Sharing Finance Facility was set up to support investment in research, development and innovation.

Financial engineering is set to take on an increased importance in the next programming period.

“Innovative financial instruments could provide an important new financing stream for strategic investments. If the EU budget can leverage investment from other public and private sources, the same funding can achieve the EU policy goals more effectively.” EU budget Review COM (2010)700 Final

Key questions

How much funds have been committed to date, how much private sector resources have been levered and how are schemes operating?

What lessons can we learn from the current schemes and what are future schemes likely to look like?

What will be the role, challenges and benefits for European Regions and how can they get ready to fully exploit these schemes in the next period?

Speakers

• Mr Rudolf Niessler, Director for Policy Coordination at DG Regional Policy, European Commission
• Ioannis Tsakiris, Head of Region for the JEREMIE initiative in Greece and Cyprus, and of business development in the Western Balkans, EIF

Further activities on Financial engineering

A joint meeting of the Task Force on cohesion and the European Funding Working Group will follow the Breakfast briefing, where the first results of the AER survey on financial engineering will be presented, as well as case-studies from regions that are in advanced stages of implementing JEREMIE and JESSICA schemes.

This event is aimed for AER members only.

More information on Financial Engineering Mechanisms

• JASPERS: Joint Assistance in Supporting Projects in European Regions;
• JEREMIE: Joint European Resources for Micro to medium Enterprises;
• JESSICA: Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas;
• JASMINE: Joint Action to Support Micro-finance Institutions in Europe.

Presentations